Vice.com has called it the IRL (in real life) revolution, or Facebook fatigue. Whatever name you give it, there appears to be a growing faction of young people who are pulling the plug on social media, seeking more face-to-face interaction with their peers and looking to find happiness offline.

The movement, which still appears to be in its infancy, is manifesting itself in different ways. From those who are deleting their social media accounts and vacationing without their smartphones to those who (ironically) are using smartphone apps to arrange meetings with IRL friends, many seem to be discovering that there is more to life than crafting an online persona to make your friends jealous.

The accidental spokesmodel — quite literally — of this movement is 19-year-old Essena O’Neill. The Australian model recently grabbed international headlines when she stepped away from social media — for the most part. With more than 600,000 followers on Instagram, 300,000 YouTube subscribers, 200,000 Tumblr followers and averaging more than 60,000 views per Snapchat post, she was what the youth call “Instafamous.”

At 18, she had a flat in Sydney and was making about $2,000 per month off her YouTube channel. It appeared as though she was living the perfect life; however, she says “IT SUFFOCATED ME.” In a video posted in November, she told her subscribers that “Taking myself off social media is a wake-up call to anyone and everyone who follows me.”

O’Neill actually kept her Instagram account — but she edited the caption of the photos that she didn’t delete to explain all of the work it took to make her followers believe that she was living the perfect life. One caption reads, “A 15 year old girl that calorie restricts and excessively exercises is not goals. Anyone addicted to social media fame like I once was is (not) in a conscious state.”

She kept her YouTube account, too. But the content she posts has changed dramatically. She has created a website called LetsBeGameChangers.com, where she encourages others to be more present, to pay attention to the life that is happening all around them instead of “a world dictated by screens, numbers, money and superficial ideas of happiness.”

“I’m over all the mainstream distractions that cloud our lives — celebrity culture, hot useless goop (some refer to this as gossip) and endless advertisements. I want to live in a world that encourages creative ideas, innovation and authentic self-expression,” O’Neill wrote.

It has all of the makings of a rebellion: a generation of youth, raised on screens and technology, suddenly tires of the game. They realize that they are not the consumers, they are the product, and they take their ball and go home. Or, in this case, they deactivate their accounts and tune out. Up until now, they have gladly played the game. But O’Neill is sounding the alarm.

“Let’s not pay attention to it all,” she writes. “It’s useless and distracting. Let’s live in the world we want for each other. So... let’s change stuff up. Let’s question things, learn more and move away from social approval. Each one of us is powerful to create great changes... let us just begin with one.”

For those not ready to tune out entirely but would like to expand their IRL social circles, well, there’s an app for that. An app called Squad, which has currently raised nearly $2 million in venture capital, aims to help you create a circle of friends around shared interests — to, like, actually hang out with in real life. For several years, Meetup.com has existed to do the same thing. Dozens and dozens of groups exist around Las Cruces, from hiking and yoga to gaming and bible study groups.

It will be interesting to see whether this movement begins to gather steam. This, after all, is not the typical story of young people fleeing one social network for another. This would signify a rejection of that system altogether — and that’s an idea worth watching.

Damien Willis may be reached at dawillis@lcsun-news.com. Visit www.damiennow.com and follow him @damienwillis on Twitter.